After two nights and four hours of performances from four teams on The Voice, the inevitable time came where America said farewell to eight hopefuls whose hopes were dashed; while 12 others would advance to the Top 12. Thursday night’s episode of The Voice was the night where America had just as much say as coaches Adam Levine, Blake Shelton, Cee Lo Green and Christina Aguilera. Who would America vote to the Top 12? And who would the coaches pick to move forward? Find out in our The Voice review for the Live Eliminations.

Let me start by saying that this show needs to be a little bit longer than one hour. While the other coaches got the leisure to talk to and about their artists and talk lengthy as to why their decision to choose their final artist to move through to the top twelve, the final coach that is up is practically rushed through only eight minutes of airtime. Now that this is out in the open, let’s move on to what happened on the Elimination Results.

The start of the show featured three-time winner, Blake Shelton, whose team took to the stage to sing Edgar Winter’s song, “Free Ride”. They sounded great together, and Nic Hawk’s dance couldn’t be missed. It’s always assumed that Blake would keep the strongest country artist, considering last season, he wanted to win with a country vocalist; therefore, I was stunned when it was announced who received the most votes via text, phone, online and iTunes. I really thought the person that would be advancing would be Shelbie Z. Her performance of “Fancy” was great, and she does have great stage presence. The highest votes went to Austin Jenckes and Cole Vosbury. The final decision was all on Blake, who had two great vocalists to choose from. Even though Shelbie has a great presence on stage and she can really belt out great country songs, there was much more that Ray Boudreaux could do vocally and song choice wise for Blake, so I can understand why he made the decision to keep him in the competition.

Cee Lo’s team was next up to present their live performance of the song, “Give a Little Bit” by Supertramp. Kat Robichaud, sporting bangs during the elimination just lights up the stage; the same can be said about Tamara Chauniece. I felt after watching Tuesday night’s performance, that they were two of the strongest female performers. When it came time for host, Carson Daly to announce the highest votes of the two who were saved, I pretty much knew that soothing singer Caroline Pennell would be chosen. The only question was who was the second choice made by America? I somewhat disagreed that Jonny Gray made it through, but there’s something in him that I just may be missing out on. It was disappointing that neither Tamara nor Amber Nicole didn’t make it through, but I was very pleased that Cee Lo kept Kat.

This is where they really need to make the show more than just an hour, especially when you have blonde stunner, Christina drawing out her reasons why she is having a hard time with who she wants to keep as her final member in her top three. But let’s move past that and talk on her team taking the stage to sing yet another Maroon 5 song that she selected. Last week she had Josh Logan perform “Harder to Breathe” and in the elimination group performance, she chose “Love Somebody”. It was a very good effort but I was not a fan of that song being done, and I love that song. America got it right when both Jacquie and Matt were saved to go through to next week’s competition. When it came to Christina deciding who she wanted to round out her top three, she could have reeled in a bit because she was eating up Adam’s time and because she was just long winded, which I chalked it up possible nerves. After her speech, she finally made her decision, and that decision was Josh.

Even though they saved the best for last, Adam deserved way more time than given; and that was a whole five minutes in which he learned the fate of his team and for him to hurriedly decide who he was going to keep. In saying that, Team Adam took to the stage to sing Capital Cities’ hit “Safe and Sound”. That whole team just sounded harmonious together on the stage and you can tell just from their performance they had a great bond with one another; which made it even harder to see two of them go.

After seeing their quick flashbacks of their performances, it was time for everyone to learn who America voted for to stay in the competition. The first person announced that was staying was former Apple employee James P. Wolpert, quickly followed by Tessanne Chin. Now time for the hard work from Adam, and believe me, he was in a very hard position because he had three strong contenders. I am guessing many assumed the obvious choice would be picked by Adam, but even he stunned himself when he didn’t choose Preston Pohl or even Grey, but chose Will Champlin to round out his team.

Next week on The Voice, America will once again be voting for the best of the best when the Top 12 is featured. Make sure to tune in next week Monday at 8/7 C.